AMY CORTESE is an award-winning journalist who writes about topics spanning business, finance, food, wine and travel. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Business Week, the New York Times, the Daily News, Portfolio, Mother Jones, Afar, The American, the Daily Beast, Talk, Business 2.0, and Wired, among other publications. Her recently published book, Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit From it (John Wiley & Sons, 2011), draws upon her experience covering these diverse realms to explore how a small shift in investment away from multinationals towards locally-owned enterprises can reap enormous economic and social benefits for individuals, their communities and the country.

Amy began her career covering high-tech from posts in Boston, New York and San Francisco, where she chronicled the fast-paced industry and its key players, including Microsoft, a colorful cast of dot-coms and the venture capitalists that funded them. As a Department Editor at Business Week in the mid-1990s, she wrote and edited many pivotal cover stories, features and commentaries illuminating the Microsoft antitrust saga, the rise of the Web, and the explosive innovation and entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley.

In the late 90s, Amy was senior vice president & director of content at Wit Capital, a pioneering online investment bank. Wit’s mission was to democratize the IPO process by allowing individual investors to get in on the era’s hot IPOs at the pre-offering price—something that was previously available only to institutional and well-connected individual investors. (Wit Capital acquired the bricks & mortar investment bank Soundview Technology Group in 2000, and the combined company was later acquired by Charles Schwab).

As a freelance writer, Amy has explored a broad range of journalistic interests, from domestic caviar to venture capital. These eclectic interests informed the writing of her book, Locavesting, which takes readers inside the local investment movement and introduces them to the pioneers creating new models for funding locally-owned businesses—whether farmers, mom & pop shops or manufacturers. In the process, these citizens are building healthy, resilient communities and restoring a more inclusive and just form of capitalism.